I NEVER PROMISED YOU A BUTTERFLY GARDEN (#3): Cathy had no landscaping in the courtyard entrance to her condo, so in an effort to impress her, I offered to landscape it for her. She said, “That would be great, I always wanted a butterfly garden.” I had never heard of such a thing.
So I began to research, the way I always do when I begin a project. Cathy said we could start with nectar plants for food and Mexican Milkweed for host plants for Monarch Butterflies. For nectar plants, we got Lantana, Plumbago, and Blue Porterweed at Home Depot.
Each type of Butterfly lays her eggs of a specific host plant, so that when the eggs hatch, the baby caterpillars have the right food to eat. There was a Native Plant Nursery on Sanibel, so off we went for Mexican Milkweed for Monarch Butterflies. And I swear, when we got back to Cathy’s, even before we could unload the car, a Monarch Butterfly was at the car window trying to land on a Milkweed.
After the Milkweed was planted, we went back to Home Depot to get Passion Vines, which were the host plants for the Gulf Fritillary. We only wanted two plants, but eggs had already hatched and there were baby caterpillars on all five Passion Vines they had in stock. When we excitedly pointed them out to the clerk, he said, “Don’t worry, we can spray those for you.” We took all five to save the baby caterpillars from the poison soon to come their way.
Cathy’s courtyard was small, and so the job was soon finished. But I was hooked on Butterflies. My landscaping at the house in Pass-a-grille was referred to, by children and women alike, as the “Jungle”. No grass, just a hedge around the property, and from the inside, plants layered to slope up to the hedge, with lots of Sea Grapes, Carrotwood trees, and Palms. Plus 12,000 Augusta bricks and 1,000 hexagon sidewalk blocks, for a huge patio on the bay and sidewalks around the house. We soon planted Passion Vines, plus a Cassia Tree as a host plant for the Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly and a Key Lime as a host plant for the Giant Swallowtail.
We didn’t bother to plant Mexican Milkweed. We had learned that Monarch caterpillars can strip a plant in just a few days, but the leaves grow back. So we just put the Milkweed in 3 gallon black nursery containers. We had also learned that a certain type of wasp lays her eggs inside the Monarch caterpillar. To protect our Monarch caterpillars, I built a screened enclosure about the size of a dormitory refrigerator. We just kept swapping out the Milkweed containers to provide food. We soon had 30 three gallon containers, and 30 one gallon containers of Milkweed.
Our last year in Pass-a-grille, before moving to the mountains of North Carolina, we raised and released over 500 Monarch Butterflies. It was amazing to watch a caterpillar form a chrysalis, and then to watch the butterfly emerge from the chrysalis.
You just don’t know what you don’t know, until you learn it!Coming next: An Artist Goes to Florence!
